Is splenda dangerous? – Your Vancouver Personal Trainer Nutritionist tip of the week.  A new study recently published in the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health has the chairman of Citizens for health in the U.S. up in arms over a recent study and the FDA’s failure to revoke its approval of the artificial sweetener sucralose, marketed under the name “Splenda”.

Splenda’s slogan is “Splenda tastes like sugar, because it’s made from sugar”. The company faced scrutiny for this slogan, as the product is actually mainly chemically derived. Sucralose is a high-potency sweetener, combined with maltodextrin and glucose (that’s the sugar part) as fillers to make Splenda. Splenda is approved for use in Canada and the U.S. and was originally thought to have no real side effects in the body, as the majority of it is not metabolized or absorbed from the gastrointestinal tract. This is the premise of most sweeteners.

What did you think of this exercise? We’d appreciate your comments…

Vancouver Personal Trainer – Kalev Training in Yaletown

w: http://www.KalevTraining.com 
t: 604-518-4691
e: Kalev@KalevTraining.com

Vancouver Personal Trainer – Kalev Training in Yaletown

w: http://www.KalevTraining.com 
t: 604-518-4691
e: Kalev@KalevTraining.com

Spices and Metabolism – Your Vancouver Personal Trainer Nutritionist tip of the week – Have you heard that eating spicy foods can help you burn fat? Although the extent to which spices can actually help you burn off a meal is unclear, studies show that adding certain spices to food (or eating more naturally spicy foods, such as peppers) can help you lose weight.

Kalev Fitness Training Vancouver DJ Jesse James – Blog entry of the week. Getting up early and working out is both foreign and intensely unexciting to me.  But I must admit it is growing on me a little. This Friday I aimed to get to the gym 30 minutes early and really warm up before my work out. Ambitious yes and it turned out to be very rewarding. When Mr Jaaguste (you may not know this but his last name is even harder to say then his first) showed up with his words of encouragement I was excited.  So we hit it hard first a combination of arms, chest and back in a cycle for several reps more then I could pump out the previous week. The warm up was really helping me push out several more push-up on the bench then I had ever imaged I could do.  Some more reps with weights in front of the mirror and some side hold that’s really worked my abs.  And as usual to finish off the work out a unique exercise on the ball that is not only emasculating but difficult. It involves getting the ball tightly up under your torso then crunching with full arms out down then pulling the body straight up and squeezing the back muscles. After the classic  5 more from Kalev I was toast and felt a horrible goodness all over my body.

Vancouver Personal Trainer – Kalev Training in Yaletown

w: http://www.KalevTraining.com 
t: 604-518-4691
e: Kalev@KalevTraining.com

Vancouver Personal Trainer – Kalev Training in Yaletown

w: http://www.KalevTraining.com 
t: 604-518-4691
e: Kalev@KalevTraining.com

Salt is an essential mineral that works in the body to regulate water content and blood volume. It is added to foods for flavour, and acts as a preservative. Salt is available in three main forms: unrefined (sea salt), refined (table salt), and iodized salt.

(Just so we’re on the same page, for simplification I generally refer to the stuff on the table as “salt” and the stuff in processed foods as “sodium”.)

The average North American gets around 3500-6000mg per day. The recommended amount of sodium is less than 2300mg (1 teaspoon) per day! But considering that sodium is in most foods in the grocery store, not to mention the massive amounts in restaurant food, this number is near impossible to achieve with Western eating habits.

When you’re young, you can probably get away with the massive amounts of salt that are in most foods without having to think twice about it. But as you get older, salt can turn into a sneaky culprit leading to high blood pressure, increased risk for cardiovascular disease and kidney problems. Not to mention, a high salt intake has been linked to certain types of cancer and bone loss. Needless to say, it’s better to get used to a low-salt lifestyle sooner rather than later.

A lot of my clients ask me if salty foods will make them fat. Calories come from carbohydrates, protein, fat and alcohol. Salt is Calorie free, so a food that is higher in sodium won’t make you gain any more weight than a low-sodium food, per se. The catch is that many high sodium foods are also high in sugar and/or fat, which very well could result in more of you to love, especially if you indulge in those foods often.

If you follow a healthy diet that happens to be high in sodium, any weight gain (or lack of weight loss) is likely due to water retention. High sodium foods will cause you to carry around a bit more water, leaving you with that feeling that is often described simply as “puffy”. No one wants to be puffy, but at least it’s temporary and easily reversible by drinking a lot of water, limiting salt, and good old exercise.

Due to the overabundance of sodium in the diet, sodium deficiency (“hyponatremia”) is very rare. Hyponatremia can occur with endurance athletes (such as marathoners) or bodybuilders, with consumption of large amounts of water without electrolytes, and excessive sweat losses.

Don’t know what to look for or can’t stomach the thought of bland food? Here are some tips for lowering sodium and keeping the flavour in your food:

http://www.factorfictionnutritionblog.com by  Kalev Personal Training Nutritionist – Janine Bolton